This research argues that government response to changes in grassroots politics has been the critical force driving the shift from employment-based to income-based policies in the Turkish welfare system over the last four decades. There are three specific hypotheses: (i) welfare institutions contain and mobilize grassroots groups, (ii) the center of Turkish grassroots politics has shifted from the formal to informal proletariat, and ethnically from Turks to Kurds, (iii) the shift from employment-based to income-based policies is a political response to the shift in grassroots politics. The research will create a database of grassroots political events in Turkey since the 1970s using newspaper archives; perform regression analyses of large sample surveys; conduct grassroots interviews; survey official documents, reports, and parliament proceedings; and interview office-holders and welfare officials. This study will contribute to literature on recent welfare system changes, discussing the under-examined effect of social movements.
Broader Impacts This study will help explain a global trend in welfare policies through detailed investigation of the Turkish case. It will increase understanding of political and structural causes of welfare policies and examine the informal proletariat?s ability to shape government policies. Additionally, this research will investigate bases of popular support for the Islamic government in Turkey and illuminate strategies which this pro-globalization government has pursued vis-Ã -vis domestic political and social challenges.
This study has four broader impacts: 1. It helps explain global trend in welfare policies through a detailed investigation of Turkish case. The growing economies such as Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, Indonesia, and Mexico are inventing and transmitting new social assistance programs (e.g. conditional cash transfers) instead of simply imitating the old poor relief programs of the western world – quite unusually in history. The co-PI has shown that political exigencies lead governments to develop and implement these policies. Thus, a broader research subject must be to analyze political exigencies that drive welfare system changes in each of these countries. This suggests that similar hypotheses should be evaluated in the other similar countries and on a global scale 2. This study has engaged long-standing debates between advocates of structural and political explanations for welfare policies, by advancing our understanding of the political causes and elucidating the relationship between political and structural factors 3. It has contributed to the fledgling literature about the growing political influence of the informal proletariat in developing countries. As opposed to its public and academic image as the passive victim of neo-liberalism, the research has shown that the informal proletariat of today is actively capable of shaping the government policies as much as the formal proletariat used to be in the past. 4. It has contributed to our understanding of the bases of popular support of the increasingly entrenched and globally influential Islamic government in Turkey. It has also shed light on the strategies that this unusual pro-globalization Islamic government has pursued vis-à-vis domestic political and social challenges, especially those regarding the informal proletariat and the Kurds, which the co-PI has shown, have become the crux of the grassroots politics. Outcomes: The research has shown that, as opposed to the common belief among scholars and the public, grassroots politics in Turkey has continued to strongly influence state policies in the neoliberal era. while the grassroots political activities of the formal proletariat and ethnic Turks have decreased, those of the informal proletariat and Kurds have increased. The shift in Turkish welfare policies has been a political response to this shift in grassroots politics. Governments have increasingly prioritized income-based policies for politically containing and mobilizing the informal proletariat and the poor Kurds. structural changes do not lead to welfare system changes when structural changes produce grassroots groups with new social needs. Rather, welfare changes occur when new grassroots groups and their social needs are politicized by contending political actors. In other words, structural changes generate grassroots groups and shape their material conditions, yet, this does not automatically drive the state authorities to expand or contract welfare provision for grassroots groups. The extent to which state authorities expand or contract welfare provision depends on the extent to which grassroots groups become politicized. The co-PI has shown that the informal proletariat, created by the neoliberal structural conditions, have been politically radicalized by the Islamists and Kurds after the 1990s and government have increased income-based social assistance policies to contain this threat. The co-PI has substantiated this using an innovative methodology, the use of local newspaper archives to quantify grassroots political activism. The growing informal proletariat has also become the main source of political power for competing mainstream political parties and this has also contributed to the expansion of social assistance programs. In sum, the informal proletariat has grown as the main source of political support and threat and this has led to the expansion of social assistance. The Kurds have become the most radical part of the informal proletariat and this has led to the disproportional targeting of Kurds on social assistance provision. The co-PI has shown that these fluctuations in welfare system change corresponded, and indeed, responded to grassroots activism of the formal proletariat as well as to political party concerns to garner popular support. Fluctuations mainly occurred because governments gave concessions to the formal proletariat as soon as workers became politicized or party competition became intensified. I argue that structural factors imposed upon by domestic and international actors do not dictate policy changes, but only present a range of possible policy choice, within which political actors seek for most efficient ways of containing and mobilizing grassroots forces. In other words, political factors drive the actual policy decisions, given the structural constraints.
